The A-Z Podcasts #2: Constantly be at the pulse of the people
It is often easy to get caught up in your vision as a social entrepreneur. After all, you’re trying to change the world and you want to tell everybody about it. Liam Black talks to Dr Aravind Srinivasan and Sandra Schembri about the importance of business basics – from learning to manage your time effectively to getting your staff wages right.
Click here to listen via iTunes (this will open an iTunes window from which you can subscribe to the podcast).
About this A-Z podcast
In the second of a series of podcasts to accompany The Social Entrepreneur’s A to Z, Liam Black talks to Dr Aravind Srinivasan and Sandra Schembri about the all important business basics that lay the foundations for all successful enterprises.
Aravind is an eye surgeon and the director of projects at Aravind Eye Care System, which is a social business that aims to eradicate unnecessary blindness across India. Using a high volume, high quality cross-subsidy model, the organisation has so far helped 10 million people.
The Aravind model, where the middle and high income patients pay market prices and the low to no income patients pay $10 per treatment, means that the organisation is able to carry out 65% of the number of cataract operations that the NHS in the UK does at 1% of the cost.
Sandra is the chief encouragement officer at The House of St Barnabas. Situated in the heart of London’s chaotic Soho, The House is a not-for-profit private members' club that supports London's homeless people back into work through an employment academy.
Despite the vast geographical distance and sector differences between the contexts in which these successful entrepreneurs are working, there’s one thing they are both clear on – business comes first. If basic business needs aren’t being met, there’s not going to be any social impact, no matter how passionate you are about the cause.
The Social Entrepreneur's A-Z with foreword by Nobel Laureate Muhammed Yunus and illustrations by Spike Gerrell is available to order here.
